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Massacre at Mountain Meadows | 
 enlarge | Authors: Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, Glen M. Leonard
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $19.77
You Save: $10.18 (34%)
New (8) from $19.77
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 3045
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0195160347
Dewey Decimal Number: 979.202
EAN: 9780195160345
ASIN: 0195160347
Publication Date: August 19, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
On September 11, 1857, a band of Mormon militia, under a flag of truce, lured unarmed members of a party of emigrants from their fortified encampment and, with their Paiute allies, killed them. More than 120 men, women, and children perished in the slaughter.
Massacre at Mountain Meadows offers the most thoroughly researched account of the massacre ever written. Drawn from documents previously not available to scholars and a careful re-reading of traditional sources, this gripping narrative offers fascinating new insight into why Mormons settlers in isolated southern Utah deceived the emigrant party with a promise of safety and then killed the adults and all but seventeen of the youngest children. The book sheds light on factors contributing to the tragic event, including the war hysteria that overcame the Mormons after President James Buchanan dispatched federal troops to Utah Territory to put down a supposed rebellion, the suspicion and conflicts that polarized the perpetrators and victims, and the reminders of attacks on Mormons in earlier settlements in Missouri and Illinois. It also analyzes the influence of Brigham Young's rhetoric and military strategy during the infamous "Utah War" and the role of local Mormon militia leaders in enticing Paiute Indians to join in the attack. Throughout the book, the authors paint finely drawn portraits of the key players in the drama, their backgrounds, personalities, and roles in the unfolding story of misunderstanding, misinformation, indecision, and personal vendettas.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre stands as one of the darkest events in Mormon history. Neither a whitewash nor an expose, Massacre at Mountain Meadows provides the clearest and most accurate account of a key event in American religious history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Massacre at Mountain Meadow August 26, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I felt this book gave a fairly unbiased account of what happened at Mountain Meadow although the authors are members of the Morman church. They give both sides of the events leading up to the tragedy. It is by far the best information I have found on this subject. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning the facts surrounding the Mountain Meadow tragedy.
Massacre at Mountain Meadows August 24, 2008
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
This book is an astute history of a painful episode in Mormon history: the massacre of an immigrant train in southern Utah while it was on its way to California in September 1857. This has been a difficult subject for members and leaders of the LDS Church to deal with, but these three Mormon historians and scholars write with candor and great detail about the incident in ways that will not necessarily be entirely comforting to their co-religionists. I recommend the book highly. REB
There is always a bias August 22, 2008
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
I took a class where we only focused on this subject for the entire semester. Like a lot of history subjects, there is no such thing as an unbiased look at this subject. You either are looking for every reason to blame Brigham Young and prove the Mormons wrong or you are looking for a reason to blame the locals for acting stupidly and prove Brigham Young had nothing to do with it. After reading journals and trial proceedings and primary documents (which Bagley hardly uses) there is no evidence that Brigham Young ok'd it. There is a problem we have now-a-days called presentism. We see things in the past with our current ideas. Things were much different in 1850's Utah. The authors try to portray that so we understand where everyone is coming from, not from our peachy "everyone loves each other" 2000's. Everyone didn't love each other then. Mormons had people massacred too, including the founder of the church. They were probably a little on edge considering the US army was coming. The caravan wasn't blameless either. They made violent threats against the Mormons.
I am not trying to justify what they did, it was wrong, but it is not as cut and dry as we think it is today. There are so many factors that the authors try to help us see besides a detailed account of what happened that day.
It is an excellent book.
 Accepting the facts but not the responsibility August 15, 2008
19 out of 29 found this review helpful
This book is written by three LDS historians who claims that they had the full support of their church in writing about this incident. The book covers the subject of Mountain Meadow Massacre that took place in Sept 1857 where 120 white settlers of a wagon train passing through Utah were murdered by white Mormons. Majority of the victims were women and children. This was the worst case of mass murder by Americans on Americans until the Oklahoma City bombing.
The book is well written and it appears to be well researched. There are 438 pages in this book but the actual narrative is only 230 pages long. First half the narrative relates to persecutions of the Mormons before they fled to Utah and second half dealt with the massacre and its environments, like the Utah War. The book set up excuses for Mormon atrocity while stating that there is no excuse for it. Remaining 208 pages of the book are filled with appendixes, notes and index. The three authors obviously wanted to show off their massive research effort in writing this book.
The book faithfully and surprisingly recount the story of the Mountain Meadow Massacre. The three LDS historians did not shy away from the fact that it was indeed the white Mormons who maintained the main attacks and tricked the doomed settlers into surrender by using a false white flag and had them murdered in a very efficient Nazi style massacre. Of course, all this have been recounted before by Will Bagley, Sally Denton and Juanita Brooks books. Interestingly, despite of their massive research, this book really don't say anything really new.
The maps proves to be quite good and there were nice historical photographs to go with it.
The authors did not appears to be surprise that local leadership of that area took it upon themselves to attack and massacre large numbers of white settlers in such major scale. Usually in a theocratic society like the one under Bingham Young, local leaders don't act on something this big without some sort of approval from their leaders. Authors did not think it was strange that Indian leaders who after meeting with Bingham Young, some of them were involved in the initial attack the wagon train that turn out to be was just a prelude to the Mormons' participation that was the main event. Nor the authors thought of injustice that these Indians got the total blame for the massacre there after. It is also funny that these LDS historians insisted that most Mormons who took part of the massacre were good people who led exemplary lives before and after the incident. The authors should read Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men. That book shows how ordinary men could turned into evil murderers when given a proper environment and lack of morals.
The book overall acknowledge Mormon participation but avoid Mormon responsibility. As the authors see it, it is a work of the few good but misled men who strayed morally for a moment. It say nothing about the effort of the church to cover up this crime and protected the men who took part of it. The book ends with the massacre and there is one additional chapter on John D. Lee, the official sacrificial lamb of the church who was executed for the crimes of so many others. Why the book did not go into the aftermath more closely is strange considering all the research the authors have done. In the criminal justice system, those who sheltered, protected, aided and abetted a crime is just as guilty as those who pulled the trigger. This is where many who blamed the LDS Church point their fingers and this is one subject that this book totally failed to address. Maybe the authors are looking for more profits and seeking to write a second book....?
Of course, as church historians, these authors will have a hard time if they actually did point out how responsible the church was for their part in the aftermath of the massacre. I do understand that but that do taint any book regarding the subject of objectivity!
Its hard to recommended this book if you have read the other three written by Bagley, Brooks and Denton. Their books are more complete. Whether you agreed with these three books or not, at least they presented the whole material. Massacre at Mountain Meadow does not. Its an incomplete book with a lot of unfinished material yet unwritten. Considering the shortness of the narrative, this is a very strange. For the price, I would recommend you wait for the follow up book if any. The material is basically introductionary in nature and considering all the research done and shown, there appears to be very little in print to show for it.
(PS: I did some revision work on this review, I think TWO stars is more worthy then three.)
Open & Honest = Superb Scholarship August 13, 2008
14 out of 19 found this review helpful
After I read this book I attended a book signing where all three authors were present. Apart from signing the book, they gave a 45 minute lecture. Richard Turley informed the audience that when Ronald Walker was approached, 7 years ago, to begin work on this book, he (Ron) said that he would not be involved with the project unless complete disclosure of the massacre was the proposed goal of the book. That goal was achieved.
Massacre at Mountain Meadows is, as has been pointed out by other reviews, written by 3 faithful Mormons. However, they do not hide any fact, no matter how poorly it reflects on the Mormons of the time. For instance, concerning Brigham Young they write: "We believe errors were made by . . . Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders, . . . and most of all by settlers in southern Utah who set aside principles of their faith to commit an atrocity. At each point along the chain of acts and decisions--especially in Iron and Washington Counties--a single personal choice or policy might have brought a different result" (p. xiv). The "errors" committed by "Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders" are not glossed over, or hidden behind the skirts of any LDS public relations committee. The men who wrote this book completely admit and demonstrate, through their writing, that the culpability for the murders can never be placed at the feet on one particular person. Indeed, the writers allow the reader to determine, by a full disclosure of facts, how much blame Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders deserve for the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Though the three men who wrote this book are faithful LDS members, they condemn the Mormon murderers and absolve the Arkansas emigrants: "The emigrants did not deserve what eventually happened to them at Mountain Meadows. The massacre was not inevitable. No easy absolution for the perpetrators is possible. Their later posturing and rationalization could never overcome one irrefutable fact: All the purported wrongs of the emigrants--even if true--did not justify the killing of a single person" (p. 115).
This book is one of the best researched and well written books on an aspect of Mormon Church and American History. The writing is superb, the flow of the text and ideas are very readable, the ending--though known to the reader beforehand--is as gripping as any novel on today's market.
Those who simply focus on the culpability of Brigham Young in the massacre miss the undercurrents that were at work in Utah during the 1850s. One man, not even if he is prophet of a Church, "during a time of uncertainty and possible war" (p. 115), hundreds of miles away from the actual killing site, in an era where the fastest way to convey information was via horse and letter, could cause so many followers to violently kill men, women, and children. The proof is in the pages of this book. There were forces at work that we, in the comfort of our air conditioned homes and relatively peaceful surroundings, cannot possibly understand. This book gives us a glimpse at how "some of the Mormons, like other men and women throughout history, did not match their behavior with their ideals" (p. 115).
In conclusion, for those clamoring to know the truth surrounding the Mountain Meadows Massacre need to read this book. Those who accuse the LDS Church of withholding facts and figures to keep their members in a trance of belief need to read this book. Mormons believe that truth aleviates suspense and doubt and this book of truth does just that.
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